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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933382">Dump Your Date for Prom</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypeSomeSenseToMe/pseuds/TypeSomeSenseToMe'>TypeSomeSenseToMe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1999, Alternate Universe - High School, Comedy, F/M, Fluff, Fluffy High School Reylo AU this is your Captain speaking, Mild Language, One Shot, Prom, Pure Fluff Modern AU, Reylo Awkward Teenagers, Reylo high school au, Romantic Fluff, So Fresh and So Clean, Twitter: reylo_prompts, for fun, virgin reylo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:35:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,779</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypeSomeSenseToMe/pseuds/TypeSomeSenseToMe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey asks Ben Solo to the Prom.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rey/Ben Solo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>243</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dump Your Date for Prom</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The year was 1999 and no one was harmed in the production of Little Shop of Horrors.</p>
<p>Filling a Reylo Prompt that was posted today. See prompt in the end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>This great moodboard was created by a friend who chose to remain nameless. I love it! THANK YOU!</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>• • •</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was a Senior.</p>
<p>He typically hung out with a group of guys that didn’t belong with the jocks, or the preppies, or the cowboys, or the skaters, or whatever other clique this school produced.</p>
<p>He wasn’t popular.</p>
<p>He wasn’t really anybody, but he was sometimes, as she’d come to find out over the years of trailing one class behind him through various schools, the butt of the joke.</p>
<p>She didn’t know why that was. He was his own person. Kept to himself. He was honestly pretty cool if someone took the time to sit down and actually talk to him.</p>
<p>Not that she’d ever talked to him.</p>
<p>He would sit at the same place every day during lunch period with the same group of friends. So what if she sat a few seats away, minding her own, noshing on chips instead of something lunch-line healthy. Listening to their conversations with her eavesdropping ears.</p>
<p>Her own grouping of friends was kind of in the same boat as his grouping of friends, not really fitting in anywhere, the only difference being that they were a year younger. A year less wiser.</p>
<p>Juniors.</p>
<p>In the scheme of things, being a Junior or a Senior, the distinction got blurred because a lot of the classes she had to take were attended by Seniors as well.</p>
<p>Kind of like the Junior/Senior Prom coming up in a few weeks’ time.</p>
<p>Rey didn’t think she would go. What would be the point?</p>
<p>But she’d heard something that bothered her. It bothered the shit out of her. And it concerned <em> him. </em></p>
<p>Ben Solo.</p>
<p>Rey was a nice person. She thought of herself as a nice person. She hated it when students picked on other students. She hated bullying or any other petty shit people could think up to make the lives of others miserable.</p>
<p>There were times she could have stuck up for other people and she didn’t do it.</p>
<p>She regretted it.</p>
<p>But she had learned from it.</p>
<p>Ben Solo was one of those boys who’d gotten overlooked growing up because he was not that cute. <em> Nothing special to see here. </em> Rey remembered the ungainly fourth grader with ears too big for his head and a goofy smile when he played soccer out on the elementary school field. She’d just moved to the district as a scared third grader. But he’d passed her the ball once in practice. And he’d never been mean to her. Any interaction they’d had in the last eight years had been pleasant. Cordial. No more than a nod or an occasional, “Hey, there.”</p>
<p>Rey never forgot stuff like that.</p>
<p>While Rey had steered toward electives like automotive and welding, Ben had gone the more artistic route in high school. Art. Drama. He was in the school’s Spring musical production.</p>
<p>She thought it was cute when he played the part of Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors last year and killed it. Well, until he got eaten at the end by a giant alien plant puppet.</p>
<p>Portraying a nerd in the school play still didn’t do much for his popularity.</p>
<p>Still. She had to give him mad props for even attempting a high school musical drama.</p>
<p>So it bothered her to no end when she overheard a gaggle of stupid girls in the bathroom talking about pulling a prank on him. Five stupid buttholes that didn’t know him. Five of the dumbest airheads that wouldn’t know a nice guy from a post in the quad.</p>
<p>They thought they were beautiful. They thought they were God’s gift to high school humanity.</p>
<p>
  <em> Gag. </em>
</p>
<p>Not that there was anything special about Rey. She was… She was all right. She didn’t look like a gremlin, or anything. She made decent grades. She worked most days after school. She had hobbies. She found herself interesting. She found value in herself and not in some school persona mask she had to wear.</p>
<p>Rey didn’t want to be anything like those girls and she was glad she wasn’t. She prided herself on her originality and actually being her own person, and not part of the one-track hivemind of the vapid Bitch Collective.</p>
<p>Maybe that was a little harsh.</p>
<p>But they had no right to try to pull something like this… this devious terrible thing. They planned for Bazine Netal to ask Ben to Prom, but then she would make fun of him and dump him once they got to the dance and had an audience. One girl said she would bring a camcorder to film the whole thing.</p>
<p>Rey didn’t know how some people could expend so much energy on being cruel when being kind was so easy.</p>
<p>Well, they weren’t going to succeed with their plan because she was going to do something about it.</p>
<p>She just had to find the cajones to ask him to the Prom herself. And she needed to find that courage in the next five minutes.</p>
<p>Her last class of the day was Auto-Tech, and the garage was closest to the school’s parking lot. So as soon as the dismissal bell rang, she could be outside and beside his car before anyone else left the main building. Of course she knew which car was his. She wasn’t an idiot. So what if she’d closely watched him fold his long limbs into it over the last few years? </p>
<p>Solo had a sweet ride. Old as hell, but it probably belonged to his dad or something. A ‘73 Ford Falcon GT hardtop. Decent shape. Could probably use a tune-up. Catalytic converter sounded like it was going bad. She would like to get under the hood.</p>
<p>Once she set up post by the door of his ride, she got to thinking that maybe he wouldn’t leave right after class. Maybe he had to stay late for Drama stuff.</p>
<p>She could wait. Waiting never bothered her. She had time. She watched cars leave the lot. Waved at some of her friends as they left.</p>
<p>Luck was with her. She didn’t have to wait too long, because Ben Solo was coming down the lot, carried by his large-footed stride. Bag slung across his back, black T-shirt, dark wash jeans. Nike sneakers.</p>
<p>Her heart pounded a little faster. He’d seen her. Was looking at her as he drew closer. His eyebrows were lowering in confusion. He turned his head to a different part of the lot. The part of the lot where she usually parked.</p>
<p>Good grief, why was her heart beating so hard? Her arms got heavy and her tongue got heavy and she couldn’t really breathe as he got closer. There was a cold sweat happening under her arms.</p>
<p>Could seventeen-year-olds die of surprise heart attacks in the school parking lot?</p>
<p>Ben slowed when he got to the trunk of his car, his dark eyes flicked up at her, kind of warily.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he said.</p>
<p>Rey wasn’t blinking. She’d forgotten how to blink. Her heavy backpack slipped off her shoulder and thunked her in the back of the knee on its way down because she was standing like a weirdo. She fell.</p>
<p>Backpack - 1</p>
<p>Rey - 0</p>
<p>Ah, crap. Gravel right into the kneecaps. She jumped up a little too fast and smacked Ben’s chin with the top of her head. He must have moved to help her up.</p>
<p>She grabbed her head, heard him grunt, and his backpack crashed to the ground.</p>
<p>“I am so sorry.” She peered up at him, cringing. “That’s the clumsiest shit I’ve ever done.”</p>
<p>He was working his jaw, rubbing it with a large hand. “Are you okay? I… I think you chipped a tooth.” His tongue probed at his lower teeth.</p>
<p>Rey’s runaway heart sank. Now she’d ruined his not-so-great teeth. Possibly made them worse.</p>
<p>She took hold of his face in both her hands. “Let me see.”</p>
<p>He blinked several times and his wide mouth fell open. Not because he was allowing her to check his teeth, but because he was shocked. Probably.</p>
<p>She couldn’t see a chip. She was looking hard. She was looking into his mouth like it was a textbook and there was a pop quiz in five minutes.</p>
<p>He patted her hand and it swallowed her wrist when it moved to grip her.</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” he said, pulling out of her grasp. “But I think you’re bleeding.”</p>
<p>Rey looked down at the ripped out patches on her jeans. Yep. Blood.</p>
<p>“I’m a chick. I’m used to blood. Don’t worry about it.” Then it dawned on her what she’d just said.</p>
<p>What an idiot.</p>
<p>She couldn’t decipher if Ben was ready to laugh or cry.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” she said again. Like an idiot.</p>
<p>He did chuckle then. It was a nice sound. And looking at him up close, he’d changed a lot in the last year. He’d grown into himself. Grown into his long face. Grown into his long arms and legs. He’d filled out. <em> Good grief. </em> Ben was kind of a babe. When did that happen?</p>
<p>And she was now staring at his chest.</p>
<p>She dashed the back of her hand around her lips, mentally smacking herself awake.</p>
<p>“I had a reason… I’m here for a reason,” she finally said.</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Well, here came the embarrassment again. “I wanted to… I wanted to ask you to Prom. You know… if you don’t have a date already. Or whatever.” She scrubbed at the back of her neck, not quite able to look him in the eye.</p>
<p>“Really?” His voice was tinged with a bit of incredulity. “Are you serious? I can’t believe this.” He turned around completely and ruffled his buzzed-off black hair in a frustrated move.</p>
<p>Rey watched him with a frown, raising her knee to wipe at the blood drying at the frayed edge of the denim.</p>
<p>He turned again to face her, his eyes wide. “Bazine just asked me not five minutes ago.”</p>
<p><em> Oh, shit! </em> Bazine Netal, that tweezed, buffed, eye-lined vulture, got to him first!</p>
<p>“And you said yes?” she growled, planting a fist on her hip. “To her?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know!” His voice rose. “I didn’t know you wanted to go with me! I’d have asked you months ago if I knew you were even interested in me! Bazine just asked, and I didn’t have a date, so, yeah. I said yes to her.”</p>
<p>Now Rey’s heart pounded for an entirely different reason. Ben Solo actually liked her? He’d have asked her months ago? Was she in the middle of a strange and wonderful dream?</p>
<p>Her eyes flew to his and she looked at him again. Oh. He <em> like </em> liked her. That was…</p>
<p>That was really nice.</p>
<p>That was…</p>
<p>That was really something nice. She started to smile. He started to smile. Two big, dumb, stupid smiles that stretched their faces and opened up brand new avenues of thought. They liked each other, and here they were, standing in the same space. Liking each other.</p>
<p>Ben quit smiling. “Bazine…”</p>
<p>Should she tell him what Bazine planned to do? Should she tell him what that Barbie beanpole and her cloned zombies had claimed they were going to do to him? She was afraid if she did, it would hurt his feelings. She was also afraid that it would make her look like a class A vengeful bitch if she tattled on her classmates like a kindergartner with a grudge.</p>
<p>What to do… what to do?</p>
<p>“Do you want to go with her?” she asked, trying to gauge his reaction.</p>
<p>“I did until you asked me.”</p>
<p>Aw. Was that, like, a compliment? She smiled again. She’d take it.</p>
<p>Okay, then.</p>
<p>“Tell her you can’t go with her. Tell her your girlfriend will tear her eyes out.”</p>
<p>“My… my girlfriend?”</p>
<p>“Yep. I mean… if you want to be my boyfriend. If you—”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>Her face was starting to hurt from smiling so much. “Yes,” she repeated after him.</p>
<p>His head whipped up and his neck craned so he could look around the parking lot. “I’ll be right back,” he said. Then he put his big hands out in a staying gesture. “Don’t move.”</p>
<p>And he was off. Rey watched him run, dodging cars and other students, until he got to the place where Bazine and her herd of bimbos usually parked. Rey had zero regrets as she watched Ben dump Bazine from afar. It was poetry, really.</p>
<p>Not that Rey was the poetic sort.</p>
<p>What Bazine wanted to do to Ben was awful. She knew that Bazine wouldn’t really care that Ben dumped her, but at least, now, Ben wouldn’t have to be humiliated by her stupid schemes. He’d got one over on her before she got one over on him, though, he wouldn’t know it.</p>
<p>And Rey got a great guy. If she hadn’t been so stupid, she could have gotten him a long time ago.</p>
<p>Ben jogged back to her, frowning.</p>
<p>“Was it bad?” she asked, scrunching up her nose.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it was really strange. She was so mad. She said that she wasn’t really…” Ben trailed off and she wondered if Bazine had given away her plan like a dumbass evil villain monologuing once the superhero was in their clutches. What a bitch.</p>
<p>“Want me to go key her car?”</p>
<p>He barked out a soft laugh. “I didn’t know you were so vicious.”</p>
<p>She shrugged. “From now on, I’ve got your back, Ben Solo.”</p>
<p>They went on their first date that night. They were awkward. But the milkshakes at the diner were sweet and so was he. He sat beside her in the booth and Rey liked that. She liked that a lot.</p>
<p>That weekend, she got to visit him at his house and meet his parents. She got to look under the hood of his Falcon.</p>
<p>His mom, Leia, asked what color dress she planned to wear to Prom.</p>
<p>And all her euphoria came crashing down.</p>
<p>She didn’t have a dress for Prom, nor did she really have the money to spare for one. She doubted her foster parents wanted to shell out cash for a dress she’d wear only once.</p>
<p>“I’ve forgotten all about a dress!” she wailed to Leia.</p>
<p>Leia assured her, in that calm Mom way of hers, that it would be all right, and that she’d help her find a dress.</p>
<p>At school, whenever their paths would meet, which was only during lunch period, they sat together. Much to their friends’ shock and awe, as it usually went whenever two people who weren’t together previously suddenly became a <em> thing </em> on campus.</p>
<p>Rey was part of a <em> thing. </em> For once in her life she actually belonged.</p>
<p>Leia insisted she help Rey get ready on the afternoon of Prom. Rey was glad of it, because she was terminally clueless when it came to dresses and makeup and hair.</p>
<p>But Leia mourned that she couldn’t get her to wear a nice pair of pumps with her black dress.</p>
<p>Rey wore her scuffed red Chucks.</p>
<p>Ben wore his Nike’s with his black tux.</p>
<p>It was cute. They were cute.</p>
<p>Ben’s parents took pictures of them posing all over the yard. Sometimes silly poses. Sometimes poses with Ben’s arms around her.</p>
<p>Rey liked those poses a lot.</p>
<p>When they parked at the school and walked together to the gymnasium, Rey said, “I don’t really know how to dance.”</p>
<p>Ben squeezed her hand. “I don’t think anyone really knows how to dance. We’ll be okay.”</p>
<p>“Did you go to Prom last year?” she asked him.</p>
<p>“Nope. I didn’t ask anyone.”</p>
<p>Rey gnawed on her lips until she remembered she was wearing lipstick for the first time in her life.</p>
<p>“I would have said yes,” she mumbled.</p>
<p>He stopped and pulled her to face him.</p>
<p>“I know that now.” He smiled.</p>
<p>She gave a firm nod of her head.</p>
<p>“And if Bazine says anything to you tonight, I will rip her hair out by the roots.”</p>
<p>“So much rage inside that tiny body.” He cupped her arms and pulled her into his chest.</p>
<p>Rey’s hands landed on his sides.</p>
<p>He leaned down and she raised up on the tips of her toes. “It’s a good thing you have my back,” he said before he pressed his soft lips to hers.</p>
<p>Her first kiss. Their first kiss. Gentle and sweet and just right.</p>
<p>It was a good thing she overheard Bazine’s stupid plan. If she hadn’t, she’d probably be tinkering with some project at home, missing out on a night in Ben Solo’s arms.</p>
<p>And she didn’t plan on ever letting him go.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>• • •</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Curious Cat Prompt: High school AU. Rey overhears the mean girls plot to ask her classmate Ben out to prom so they can ditch him and mock him for his looks so she decides to foil their plan by asking him to prom herself.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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